I will be the first to admit that I had lost some faith in this team. That 4 loses in 5 nights was brutal. I don’t know if I’ve ever raged so hard about a game as I did during that Boise loss. Up 18 with 4 minutes left?? FML. But after looking at the stats I think it’s safe to say we are back. What the data show is that we had a serious lack of effort during our unexplainable losses (injuries probably didn’t help here), combined with shooting that can only be described as so poo-poo.

Rebounds are the ultimate effort metric. On the season, we average 56% of all possible rebounds (TRB%) and 32.3% of all possible offensive rebounds (ORB%). These are two stats we are elite in, ranking 14 and 65 in the NCAA respectively. So, what happened during our losing streak?

UNLV – ORB% - 25% TRB% - 40%
SDSU – ORB% - 24.2%, TRB% - 48.3%
Air Force – ORB% - 16.7%, TRB% - 37.3%

Ouch. We were well below average in all 3 of those games. And just awful, so awful, for the UNLV and Air Force games. And I think we could all feel the lack of effort for those games. For the Nevada game and on we have bounced right back, and even been well above our average.

Nevada – ORB% - 33.3%, TRB% - 61.5%
Boise – ORB% - 36.1%, TRB – 57.8%
Air Force – ORB% - 29.4%, TRB – 57.1%
Colorado State – ORB% - 26.3%, TRB% - 57.7%
Wyoming – ORB% - 29.2%, TRB% - 64.4%

For these four wins, we have won by an average of 18.5 points. These large blowouts are coming while still not shooting the three ball particularly well. (Nevada – 29%, Air Force 32%, Wyoming 30%)

The Boise game, there is no doubt we should have won that game. Up 18 with 4 minutes left, that is a fluke. But even though we lost at least we saw the effort there (for the first 36 minutes).

So, there it is, I choose to believe those three games (Mostly UNLV and Air Force) are the outliers for the entire Craig Smith tenure as opposed to the new normal to expect. Choose to doubt for a few more games if you choose. I suspect we will likely lose SDSU, but I expect more blowout wins than loses during this closing stretch.

Here is a graph showing our Total rebound percentage over the season.

When we get 50% or more of the rebounds we are 14-2.
When we get less than 50% of the rebounds we are 3-5.

Do we bring the effort and out-rebound UNLV? Hopefully! UNLV averages 55.8% of rebounds which is #11 in the country (we are #13).

Thank you for bringing some good data to the convo.
Now I’m going to speak on emotion.
Keita, Bean, Brito, Merrill are warriors.
But we have a point guard that literally cant get the ball up the court with any kind of pressure on him and a two guard that can’t shoot or rebound or defend.
That bodes poorly for any type of post season play.

Well we out rebounded the #11 rebounding team in the nation by 8 boards. Good effort by the team against a very aggressive rebounding team.


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We need to continue out rebounding, but without much of an offense, I wonder how long we can sustain it, especially in the post season?

Updated graph posted. Another great rebounding game. Another 10+ point victory.